One o’clock
I was fair once my lovelies.
Skin supple
wind murmured through my hair
shifting like the sighs of suckled babes
over my countenance
I breathed in the light of stars and galaxies
poured my grace into waterfalls
nuanced the mist that rose and wreathed with love
those who loved me then and were still to come.
Two o’clock
I embraced, starlight paled my skin,
life pulsed through the alveoli of trees
coursed in rivers bays and coves winkled with shells
teeming brimming boiling with fish weaving through greetings of weed
I lifted my arms to the arcane vault of the sky
my fingers fringed the horizon
teasing out moisture that misted my grateful mouth
I drank deeply at the pools glittering near my feet.
Three o’clock
In the profound dark of night swinging with thuribles of stars
spilling the light of aeons upon the tawny frogmouth
the wee green treefrog clinging to his pale branch
the ghostly curlicues of mist rising from the lake
trembling with a descant ring of joy intensely thrilling,
haloed in a wreath of light,
I called for union with my beloved
and oh it was here with me that the sons and daughters of heaven
sang the song that laid the cornerstone of life
Four o’clock
Casting thought in a vast arc
incandescent, swinging high then low
two lights appeared; first sun to mark the day
then moon to mark the night
but more than this the lesser lights
the jokey glowworm happy with his bright bum
its cousin flitting firefly, the clattering click beetle,
and deeply in dark and cold waters
the crazy angler fish lit his reading lamp way
phosphorescent drifts in oceans
luminescent squid trail like a mermaids hair
Five o’clock
Oh I was fair beloved!
My friends all, great and small teemed and gamboled
played artless games breathless with laughter
all enfolded in coruscating specks of light shivering in their time
in their ecstasy
so that all life knew
I was fair, so fair, beloved.
Six o’clock
On the promontory, with its hard basalt nose sticking out
I called them forth from the shimmering motes,
male and female they were, dove shy, still soft.
The rocks ground their teeth
rumbling subterranean cracks faulted in the mantle
like wayward children put to bed the bedcovers of hills were ruched in folds
as all the earth moved and complained,
but I loved these two the best
I kissed them on the mouth and fed my words into them
I sang my love into their breasts
their swelling bodies rocked tumescent
and climaxed into knowing the we of I.
Seven o’clock
I saw him mark a rock with shapes and lines
to draw the hunt wherein the great beast was felled that day,
it spilled its blood upon the land fecund, verdant.
I saw woman shamed and into silence go
Hungering for a pelt to cover her lovely form.
Where then the fruit for you, the grain for you, the roots and tubers
vines flowers, the honey sweet for you?
I knelt and put that great head on my lap
swept aside the flies that crawled upon the darkened orbs,
the eyes that saw the pointed spears thrown
the cry so quickly choked by gushing blood
her knees collapsed and the earth received
the fall.
Eight o’clock
They work and build, they teem across the plains.
Numbers formulae plotting the course of stars
They sail, pirates in a caravelle
The great astrolabe of intelligence subjugates all matters
Mountains scaled rivers coursed and oceans crossed
Over everything they dominate and thrive
These children more like bees than hive
I stand and watch their monuments rise
A ziggurat a pyramid a tower marble statues to golden gods
I’m making lists as fast as I can go
Of these, my children’s tickets to eternity, posterity or glory-o.
Nine o’clock
Someone knocks; a hollow echo booms within, not knowing…
a sigh a cry a shout from without , I stay inside
curl in nimbus and cirrus, in the heat the wings of hummingbirds fan me,
it is getting late, still the din grows louder strident
clamouring, the sounds of hammers, the crackle and roar of fire
wailing of babies and groans of old men from outside my door
I go out.
Ten o’clock
From my hill I see them spread below, a multitude incalculable,
black brown yellow white pink, all these babies
reaching blind to things they can never see
I swallow them in to my eyes
peer into them with my mouth
and feel them with my heart,
they are one but legion mired in the diurnal round of fleshly cycles
they heave and struggle, take steel to finish off what gold didn’t take first
from the top of my hill I call out
“Don’t do to someone else what you don’t want done to you!”
I feed them but
like cells the crowd divides,
meiosis untrammeled and a mad malignancy is born.
Eleven o’clock
I’m woken by an immense light for seconds brighter than my soul
The stones cry out,
trees scream in the horror of being ripped from the womb of earth
The juddering teeth of rocks grinds and will not stop
cooked fish flood the land the animals birds flowers
the wee green tree frog
the tawny frogmouth
the doe eyed creatures great and small
The cricket in his dark hole playing his legs
The bison slaughtered in a sticky sickening sea
The hacked and cracked slapped crushed macerated chunks of my children
The ice plains crack, the glaciers slide, they melt, they steam,
the turning of all
From all it was into all it is
The great rape has begun .
Three minutes to twelve
What to do what to do what to do what to do
I have sent my best, my lions, my horsemen,
the great beast with eyes multifocal
I waved away the great prostitute with my bloodied loin cloth
I walked on the marches
Suffered in the prisons
When you were lashed, spat on and hung, I too,
When the incandescent bombs were strapped on making a red smear
Of you , I was incandescent too.
I have whispered in the dreams of men
Turned them unholy cowards in their sweaty beds
I have trumpeted warnings in your news
As the floods came
As the storms turned their eyes
upon babies whimpering under beds
And giant hands dragged them into towns collapsing in wave after wave
Sweeping them up trees turning them in wire prisons
Rolling them in the depths like crocodile snacks
You shake and wonder murmur what next what now what will happen
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you this
Half from one
Two from four
Four from eight
In an exponential chain
It will not abate
It will not stop
until my face is fair again.
22/02/2017